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Archive for November, 2015

Four turkey poults hatched in all from the incubator. The night I went out to the pen to move the turkey into her new home and put the 4 little poults under her, there was a surprise for me too. As usual I grabbed her off the nest and put her in the new pen. I popped the new little turkeys under her and they just disappeared into her feathers. We were about to leave and go inside, when I heard a distinctive cheeping! She’d hatched a poult herself and I’d just left him behind! So I grabbed the chick and popped him under her again. Now we had 5. Four were white and one was speckled like her. Its a bit hard to tell their sex but 4 seemed to have a little bump on their noses and might just be boys.

A week passed and the turkeys were settling into their new section of the turkey house. The little speckled chick was looking a bit sad. It had been a cold and wet night. So I got him out and put him next to the turtle light again. I remember he looked a me with his bright little black eye and I hoped the light would warm him up but he just wouldn’t eat or drink and the next day he died.

A few weeks passed. The weather started to get hotter. I kept thinking about how they were exposed to the sky even though they spent a lot of time under their mother. I’d been working on a new hen house in the yard next to them. Under the door of the big hen house is a detachable piece of wood I remove in the day so the hens can get in to lay. This is because we have a lot of marauding crows and currawongs, who with their cruel big beaks just pick up eggs and fly off with them. Thinking to thwart them from getting in to steal eggs, I hung some CDs in front of the space. The next morning I was awoken to the sound of a distressed hen. It was about 6am, but nothing will stop me from jumping up and seeing if a fox is about, nothing will stop me from hurtling out the door and chasing off into the paddock, nothing except for needing to visit the toilet. So, after this small delay, I raced over to the turkey house to see a baby poult dangling from the near the top of the wire. He’d been severely attacked by currawongs, who disbarred from their normal morning egg breakfast by the CDs, had decided to eat one of my poults instead. The poor little thing was bleeding but still alive so I raced him inside and put him near heat. Back at the pen, I assessed quickly that he’d been taken from behind the house where the turkey herself couldn’t see him and this is when the currawongs had seen their chance. Putting a tatty piece of bird netting over this section, I also installed the male turkey to strut inside the pen with the female. At least his strutting and displaying would have a purpose there.

That afternoon, I bought bird netting and draped it over the entire pen. Not only would it keep out the currawongs and keep the turkeys in, but it also kept out the few hens and roosters who live in the turkey pen so saving on me buying starter crumbles. But best of all never again would a currawong take one of the poults. However, the poult who’d been attacked died. Poultry keeping is definitely learnt the hard way.